Whetting your Appetite
Today, random stinks cruising about Los Angeles go without comment by major newspapers, or city officials. In 1931, however, things were a bit different, especially when it was very clear where the stink was coming from -- two unclaimed trunks that arrived on the train from Phoenix. Given, it wasn't unusual for passengers to travel at the time with raw meat in their possession, the security at Union Station was made suspicious by the behavior of the young woman who claimed the trunks (after they had been sitting around for hours.) Winnie Ruth Judd stuttered some excuses and got out of there. The security guards opened the trunk to the lurid vision of a face looking up at them. The bodies of two women were in the trunk, her supposed best friends, Anne Le Roi and Hedvig "Sammy" Samuelson. The police picked her up days later, bedraggled and hungry, whereupon she was returned to Phoenix to face trial. In 1931, Ruth, as she was called, was 26. She had been married to a doctor with a drug habit, and after two failed pregnancies, she contracted a touch of tuberculosis and left her husband in Indiana to travel to Phoenix. She had a job as a nurse there. She got a bob and began living fast in a city which still had something of the wild west outpost about it.
Jack Halloran became involved with Ruth and her friends. There's little question that he had a relationship with Ruth, and he may have had some sort with Anne and Sammy as well (though some tales paint them as lesbians.) The way Ruth later told the story, Ruth introduced Jack to an attractive friend and Sammy and Anne became very jealous. There were threats -- the kind that could destroy lives and reputations. Then Sammy attacked her with a gun and they struggled. Ruth was shot in the hand. Anne beat Ruth with an ironing board, imploring Sammy to finish Ruth off. Ruth got the gun, and it fired wildly, killing Anne and Sammy.
Over the course of the night, she called Jack Halloran (who was rich and powerful) and he said he would help her cover up the crime. He arranged the trip to Los Angeles, put Anne in the trunk and ended up dismembering Sammy to make them both fit. He said he would arrange for her to be picked up in Los Angeles, and then they could dispose of the bodies in the desert there. But he didn't.
The papers painted a picture of Ruth Judd as a femme fatale, a murderess and an adulteress. Some people were hard pressed to figure which was worse. At her trial, it was said that she killed her friends in cold blood (there was little evidence of premeditation, and she had obviously been beaten.) She was quickly convicted and sentenced to death. Jack Halloran was never even called to the stand.
To be continued...
posted by kuaptic. @ 8:10 AM
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